


this softness (a knife, a knife, a knife)

by Nocturnememory



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Harry Potter is a Horcrux, Minister for Magic Tom Riddle, Morally Grey Harry Potter, Possessive Harry, Possessive Voldemort (Harry Potter), Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Pureblood prejudices, Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter), Underage Sex, Voldemort Raises Harry Potter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-12 22:42:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29766729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nocturnememory/pseuds/Nocturnememory
Summary: I was with you,he says, with his fingers ghosting along her scar.Right here, always.She’s curled up against his side, Tales of Beetle the Bard, sits splayed open on the other half of the bed, but there’s no story she likes hearing more than the one he’ll tell her and only her, in the low light of her bedroom, half-asleep and pressed up as close as she can get to him.I had to put myself back together,he’ll say, with his fingers on her cheek or her scar, his voice this low-rolling thing that fills her up so nicely, rumbling out of his chest and into her.You were my little guide in the dark for all my scattered parts.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Comments: 41
Kudos: 295





	this softness (a knife, a knife, a knife)

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: This is two prompts mixed into one, hopefully that works out for both prompters... the first was “What if Voldemort won the first war but harrie still ended as a hocrux?! Their life and story then. Would he watch over her as she is raised? Maybe care for her more or less?“ and the second, “How do you think Voldemort would raise Harrie? If he took her or kidnapped her from her parents instead of trying to kill her.”
> 
> This doesn’t quite match up with both exactly, but it merges the two together because I think they were too similar to not meld together into one prompt.
> 
> hopefully the two prompters enjoy it anyway!
> 
> This is definitely pretty dark and like, very very morally complicated. Don’t be fooled by the fluff in the first part. If you’re at all sensitive to underage/age-gap stories, this one is definitely not for you. While I’ve done my best to keep it from being squicky with grooming, there’s definitely still going to be threads of this story that cross like, a lot of boundaries.

* * *

## this softness (a knife, a knife, a knife)

* * *

one

* * *

Outside of her cupboard, there’s a knock on the front door of Privet Drive.

In the kitchen, a chair scrapes back, her uncle grumbles and mutters about _dinner time_ and _no good nuisances._ His footsteps are heavy and thundering as he passes by her cupboard, blocking the striped, reaching light from the slats for a moment as he heads to the front door.

His footsteps fade as he turns the lock and yanks the door open, his voice sharp and hard. “Do you know what time it is? What kind of f—”

There’s a thump and a sliding sound, like something heavy being pushed across the floor. Like when Aunt Petunia has Harrie vacuum the front room and she has to push and push the big couch back to get at the dust underneath.

The light to her cupboard gets blocked again, that sliding noise louder and louder like whatever is being pushed is sliding right past her cupboard door along the strip of carpet in the hallway.

Beneath that noise, just beneath it, something gurgles and gasps.

And then, there’s a scream. A thump, more thumps, something breaks and shatters and underneath it all, that choking, gasping gurgling sound.

Harrie huddles into the corner of her cupboard with her knees to her chest and her arms shaking, clutching at her little tin soldier in her sweaty palm.

 _No one ever looks in her cupboard_ , she tells herself, they won’t find her in here. She’s safe in her cupboard, she’s always been safe in her cupboard.

It gets louder, the thumping and gurgling and screams outside of her cupboard and Harrie tucks her head into her knees, squeezing her eyes shut—

Until—

Until—

It goes quiet.

Her ears strain and she pulls in a breath and holds it, trying to hear what’s going on in the kitchen.

There’s a drip, drip, drip… and Harrie swallows, turning her head towards her cupboard door, watching the light stripping through the slats, her heart thundering in her ears as she holds her breath just a little bit longer.

_Drip, drip, drip._

Like spilled milk over the edge of the kitchen table, she thinks, or juice from one of Dudley’s tantrums that Harrie always has to _clean up, girl._

_Drip, drip, drip._

Shaking, she hears footsteps, a pair of shoes over the hard kitchen floor turning into softer steps on the carpet in the hall. Steady and slow, coming towards her; they sound too heavy to be Aunt Petunia’s, but much too light to be Uncle Vernon’s.

 _A stranger_ , she thinks. It’s a stranger in the house, isn’t it?

She huddles smaller, hugging her knees tighter as the footsteps stop in front of her cupboard; it blocks some of the light, the pair of legs just outside of the door.

Her heart pounds, wild and unsteady and so loud in her ears it sounds like Dudley jumping on the stairs above her head. _Thump thump thump._

The latch slides and drags back in a metallic scrape.

She goes cold at the same time something hot burns through her stomach and— and she feels— she feels—

So _angry. So angry, her palm’s slippery and hot and it was over too quick, too quick, should have taken longer. Drawn it out._ It’s clawing at her insides and— and the knob turns and the feeling cuts off, sharp and sudden enough to make her hitch a little breath.

The door pulls back.

A man crouches down slowly, he’s tall and big and fills the little, angled doorway of her cupboard up until there’s barely any space left.

He holds his hand out, it’s red and shiny, even in shadows of her cupboard.

“Hullo, Harrie,” the man says with a careful, slow smile that makes her feel…makes her feel…

It makes her slide forward, unfolding from her tucked-up, tight huddle in the corner, makes her slip her hand into his sticky one so he can pull her out towards him until she can tuck her head into his neck and wrap her arms around his shoulders and cling onto him so tight she thinks it has to hurt him.

But his fingers are long and warm as they push into her hair to cup the back of her head as his arms wrap around her like they’re swallowing her up in the size of them; his voice is low and warm and she can _feel_ it inside of her chest, her belly, the clench of her knees digging into his ribs, trembling to cling on tighter and tighter and _tighter_.

His head turns into her shoulder, his chest shifts against hers as he breathes out, long and slow and warm over her skin, his arms tightening just a little bit more around her.

“I’m sorry it took me so long.”

She’s so much smaller than he expects.

He doesn’t burn the house down, no matter the desire to wipe the filth of that family off the face of the Earth like God’s hand coming down with a vengeful flood.

No, _no_. That’s almost kind, isn’t it? Fire purifies in so many ways, and they deserve to die like the bugs they are. A smear of gore on glass. Crushed beneath his palm.

He seals the house and leaves them to _rot._

The girl, _his_ girl, breathes gently against his neck, her cheek soft and warm, her arms lax over his shoulders. She hasn’t spoken yet, but she knows him.

She _knew_ him as soon as she saw him.

In a cupboard. A _cupboard_. (He killed them too quickly, too easily. He should’ve taken his time taking them apart. Chained them to a rockface and picked at their organs and bones like a vulture. Left them to be gnawed on by rats and birds a little more each day.)

His girl whimpers at the heat of his anger and irritation, and he ducks his head and presses his lips to her forehead, his voice low and easing, _shh, sweet girl, it’s alright._

She weighs nothing, and it’s his own fault for being so caught by it. She’s taken up so much space in his mind for years that the reality of her, no matter that he knows she’s nothing but a four-year-old child, leaves him staggering to process it.

He’s been hunting for her for so long. Four years since he knew about the idea of her. Three years since he’s _known_ _her,_ known her voice and her face in flashes, known her hunger and her tears, known the terribly rare sound of her laughter. (Once, just once, a kitten-lick on her palm, a stale house with an awkwardly-kind old woman surrounded by cats who fed her stale cake.)

A squib, he’d found out later, a kind old fucking _squib_ faithful to Albus. She’d lived only long enough to seal her own fate. ( _A terribly small girl,_ she’d said around her tea cup, her eyes glassy and unfocused, _I’m not sure they treat her very well but—_ )

But.

_But._

_  
_

When he was a boy, he imagined that when the day came that he and Albus came wand-point to wand-point, it would be bloody and beautiful and _biblical._ The battle of Armageddon; the orphan boy and the false king.

_(His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God.)_

A final stand that would raze Britain to its foundations and let the victor rebuild it in whatever image they chose. A fanciful, violent dream shaped by a boy sculpted by his childhood. Verses twisted to fantasies. Recitation twisted to conception.

It would have been _something._

But now— now Albus has fashioned himself a noose of his own making and it tightens by the hour. Inches tighter by the minute. There will be no crowns and no battle, no fire and no brimstone.

There are bruises on her and she weighs _nothing._

He holds her through the twist of Apparition, carries her into his estate that’s been sitting empty, sitting waiting, sitting ready for the _moment_ he finally found her.

He peels her out of her too-large muggle clothes and sinks her into a bath so overloaded by bubbles from an overeager house-elf that she nearly disappears into them.

The house elves send food and Harrie picks at apple slices with peanut butter and sliced fruit with slick little fingers.

He sinks himself onto a conjured stool beside the tub and does not even once think about what anyone would think about _Lord Voldemort_ sitting at the side of a child’s bathtub.

Instead, he rolls his sleeves and pulls bubbles into little animal shapes to move around her head. Sends an Erumpet charging through a bubble-boulder, a snake winding over her head, a little fluttering pixie that blows bubbles out of its little bubble mouth.

Her laughter is sweeter than that one echoing sound of it he heard once in his chest— sweeter than any sound, in truth, in all the years he’s been alive or a shade or something caught between the two.

Harrie laughs and giggles and soaks until she’s pink and pruned, until all the filth of those muggles is nothing more than dirt sinking down the drain.

After, when he plucks her out of the tub and wraps her in a too-large towel, she stands between his bent knees and shivers in the chill outside of the tub, the fluffy thick, white towel tugged up to her mouth as she blinks at him all wide-eyed and green; hopeful, resigned, curious, cautious.

“Are you real?” she asks, her voice small and muffled as he rubs his hands briskly over her shoulders and back to warm her up again.

His anger is a sudden and ice-cold dagger inside of him. Harrie's brows furrow and her body tightens, shoulders tensing, pulling the towel higher and tighter until its right under her nose.

He reigns it in, swallowing it down and resumes rubbing over her shoulders and back. “Yes, I’m real,” he says, as light and easy as he can manage. “Do I not feel real?”

She shrugs her little shoulders and leans into him, tucking her head against his shoulder. She’s warm and damp and he can feel it soaking into his clothes slowly, but he wraps her up in his arms and lets her burrow closer, still clutching at the towel but pressing herself into him.

“I’m real,” he says as her hair soaks his shoulder and she turns her head and presses her cheek against his chest. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time, Harrie.”

She’s quiet, her body slowly easing in his arms as her shivers subside. “You promise you’re real?”

“I promise.”

(Albus has lost the right to be remembered. He’ll be no more than those muggles dead in Four Privet Drive, a smear of bug guts on glass.

He’ll leave the man to rot in a field, he thinks. 

Nothing but dead and rotting meat.)

_I was with you,_ he says, with his fingers ghosting along her scar. _Right here_ , _always._

She’s curled up against his side, _Tales of Beetle the Bard,_ sits splayed open on the other half of the bed, but there’s no story she likes hearing more than the one he’ll tell her and only her, in the low light of her bedroom, half-asleep and pressed up as close as she can get to him.

He’s warm and so big and Harrie never feels like she can get close enough, no matter where she tucks her head or how hard her hand curls into his shirt. His heartbeat is steady and familiar, even when it wasn’t. Even when she isn’t sure she knew his face, she thinks she always knew him.

 _I had to put myself back together,_ he’ll say, with his fingers on her cheek or her scar, his voice this low-rolling thing that fills her up so nicely, rumbling out of his chest and into her. _You were my little guide in the dark for all my scattered parts._

She doesn’t like the idea of him being _apart_ but in her mind he’s like a puzzle and she’s piecing him back together with her own little hands, fitting all his edges into hers the way her still-bony knees and elbows fit so nicely into the warmth of his chest or under his arm. The way her cheek will fit hotly against his shoulder and she can hear that wave-like _whump-bump_ of his heart that always reminds of her when she was in her cupboard and it was dark and empty but not so empty at all. When she’d shut her eyes and plug her ears to cover the sound of the Dursleys forgetting about her. In the quiet, in the press of her palms, she’d hear that ocean-like sound, _whump-bump, whump-bump._

It’s her favourite place to be, listening to that sound inside of him; her ear pressed up against his shoulder or chest and she thinks he knows it, too, because sometimes he’ll slide his hand over her cheek until it covers her other ear, until the world fades away and there’s nothing but that sound. Nothing but the weight of his palm, his fingers in her hair and his thumb tracing slowly over the edges of her scar.

_Whumpbump._

There’s a man kneeling on the floor, and he’s bound in shackles and he looks at Harrie with the saddest look Harrie’s ever seen, like those dark paintings she’s seen hanging on the walls in the Malfoy’s long hallways, their faces twisted and dark.

The man in front of her and Tom says her name like it’s something other than just a name.

“Harrie,” he says with a face that twists almost painfully towards tears. _Harrie, I’m so sorry—_

She doesn’t know what he’s sorry for, but one of the Death Eaters standing next to him yanks a thick silver chain that’s attached to a thick silver collar around his neck and the man grits his teeth as his eyes flash yellow and something growls low in his throat as he winces in pain.

Tom carries her as he walks in front of the man, but there’s a smile on his face just for her, and in her ear he says: _he thought he could hide you from me,_ like it’s a funny little secret just for them.

Harrie almost laughs, burrowing her smile into his chest instead; she doesn’t think it’s the right place to laugh, it’s too cold and _tight_ in the room. It doesn’t feel _right._ But it’s funny all the same and she feels it bubble inside of her because—

Because Tom hunted _giants_ for her, she knows the story; she was hidden away like a princess in those adventures in her picture books.

_The half-giant came thundering through the rubble and stole you away from the battle right when I’d finally found you._

The giant had been the one to leave her with the Dursleys, Tom said.

Sometimes, Harrie thinks she remembers it, this cracking roar of a sound that she thinks must’ve been the giant; she remembers being carried so _high up_ that it must have been something very tall carrying her.

 _He was the key to finding you,_ he’d tell her whenever she asked for the story, _and I fought him until he fell like a great, old tree and then I cracked him open until he spilled all those terrible secrets in his thick, giant head._

 _It’s silly,_ she thinks, that anyone could think Tom _wouldn’t_ find her. The man kneeling in front of them should have known better.

“This one,” Tom says as he shifts Harrie in his arms and walks around the chained man. “Was one of Albus’ most loyal little _dogs._ But he’s been hiding away in the muggle world, hasn’t he? Like the little traitor he is.”

The last comes out sharper, harder, and Harrie feels Tom’s anger in her belly; sometimes she’ll get echoes of it when he tells the story but it’s brighter now, more real.

It isn’t just a bedtime story, she knows, no matter how many times she asks for him to tell it. She knows it’s all _real_.

Tom fought _giants_ for her.

“Not even a _dog,_ ” Tom says and then he smiles again and presses it into Harrie’s cheek until Harrie looks at him and wraps her arms around his neck and drops her cheek to the thick of his shoulder to watch the bound man from the comfort of Tom’s heartbeat beneath her ear when he pulls back.

“No, not a dog,” he says lightly. “But we’ll let him find himself, won’t we, sweet girl? We’ll show him what sort of _beast_ he truly is.”

The man swallows and jerks in his chains, his eyes closing as his shoulders slump. “I’m so sorry, Harrie.”

She frowns and fiddles with a button on Tom’s shirt, blinking at the man; she doesn’t know what to think about him, only that he’s awfully silly for thinking Tom wouldn’t find her, and must not be that smart to think he could _hide._

Tom’s very, very good and Hide and Seek. He _always_ finds her.

“It’s a full moon tonight,” Tom says lightly. “We should go to the beach, shouldn’t we?”

Harrie sits straighter in his arms, glancing at the other man. She doesn’t think Tom means to bring him along, they usually only go to the beach together but… “Just us?”

Tom chuckles and nods. “Just us. He’ll be much too busy tonight, I’m afraid. He’s been cooped up and hiding for so long, I’d imagine he needs some time to be himself, hm?” he pinches her side, his smile growing at her laughter before he turns his head to look at the other man. “And he must be _quite_ hungry, I’d imagine.”

_Nagini,_ Tom tells her, holding her in the waist-deep water along the edges of the lake as the snake slides through the waters around them like a glimmer of dark oil just under the surface. She’s big and long and endless, circling Tom’s waist, brushing slickly against Harrie’s toes where they dig into his hip.

She isn’t sure if she’s afraid, because Tom’s with her and nothing bad will happen to her if he’s there, she knows, but she clings on a little tighter to his shoulders, peering down into the dark waters, the sun above them lighting only the first few inches, just enough to see the metallic, colourful scales along the snake’s skin as she circles them.

Tom walks further into the water, until it laps coolly over her waist and his stomach and she’s only half-listening but ever attuned to his voice in her ear.

 _Naga’s prefer the water,_ he says, _but Nagini loves to hunt in the fields. Fat cows and wild deer, the bigger the better. She’ll squeeze and squeeze,_ he says, his arms tightening around her, _until they fall asleep, and then…_

He pinches her side and makes her squeal out a laugh and slosh the water around them as he sinks them up to their shoulders.

_She’ll bite them, quick and sharp, sinking her venom into them._

_You’d be nothing to swallow up,_ he teases, _a little mouthful. A little appetizer with sharp little bones._

 _You wouldn’t let her eat me,_ Harrie insists.

 _No?_ he asks, with his crooked smile that makes her whole tummy do this happy little dance and makes her grin back as she shakes her head, the damp edges of her hair flying around them.

_I’m not food._

_Aren’t you?_ he says, with a laugh as he takes her hand in his and moves it out into the water to stroke over Nagini’s winding scales. _What are you then?_

 _Yours,_ she says and his grin is wide and so _happy_ she can feel it, like little bursts along her insides.

 _You are,_ he says and brushes his nose over the soft of her cheek before he lets out a little snarl and bites her cheek lightly. _You’re mine to eat up, aren’t you?_

Harrie squirms in his arms, giggling at the scrape of his teeth over the soft of her cheek, before she bites him back, snapping her little teeth at him, her nose scrunching with a growl. _No. I’ll eat you._ She says and wraps her arms around his neck, tighter and tighter. _Like Nagini,_ she decides, _I’ll swallow you up._

He laughs into her shoulder, and she barely pulls in a breathless squeal of surprise when he dunks them both into the water, Nagini winding around them, her voice as smooth as silk.

_Hello, little hatchling. He’s been hunting for you for ssso long._

The door creaks open and he glances up, even though he already knows who it is, sneaking into the room. Though, he thinks, _sneaking_ isn’t quite the word for it.

His girl slips sleepily into his office, clutching a throw blanket from her bedroom around herself, her hair wild and her eyes heavy with sleep. Her bare feet quiet little pats in the lull in the room, the blanket dragging behind her like a cloak.

Abraxas’ lips turn up at the sight, hiding a smile in the way he leans on his elbow, his fist just covering his mouth. Bellatrix’s jaw tightens in irritation, as young and too eager as she is vicious and cruel.

Severus watches the girl, his mind carefully, perfectly blank.

Harrie stumbles up to his side and he turns in his chair, letting her clamber onto his lap, pressing her warm cheek into his chest as she curls up in her blanket. She grabs at his arm, dragging it over her middle, a soft little pout in her lip.

“Spoiled girl,” he whispers before shifting her, settling her more comfortably on his lap, listening to her little inhale and sigh, feeling the curl of her hand into the front of his shirt, holding onto him.

She’s asleep in moments, the gentle hum of her mind always at the back of his, fades into a soft, blurry thing full of contentment.

“The papers are already running the story,” Abraxas continues after clearing his throat and schooling his face. “The attack on the Ministry will be blamed on the Order. I edited the article myself, malcontents targeting Purebloods and Minister Bagnold, who so recently and tragically lost his wife to the very same violent insurgents.”

“How terrible,” Tom smiles, feeling that same contentment that comes with Harrie’s steady heartbeat against his. “I look forward to tomorrow’s paper.”

Albus dies alone a week later. A poisoned candy rotting away in his stomach.

(He lets them bury him and lets them mourn. He takes Harrie to Italy for the week and lets her press gelato-sticky kisses to his cheek in the heat of the Italian sun and the salty spray of the ocean. He’s never been partial to lemon, but he smiles around glass after glass of Limoncello and laughs at the face Harrie makes when she insists on tasting it.)

Lemon has never tasted better, he thinks.

(He digs him up when they get back. Strips him naked before dumping him in a field just outside of Hogwarts wards. No final words, no victorious speech; Harrie’s waiting for him already, tucked into his bed no matter how many times he carries her back to her own.)

Victory, Tom realises, looks entirely different now:

Sleep-warm cheeks, bony knees in his ribs, a little reaching hand that curls around his finger. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to hear your thoughts :)


End file.
